In a strange and astonishing rite that some might possibly consider a bizarre form of cannibalism, placentophagia, the practice of eating a a placenta (or afterbirth), began in the seventies, when people residing in California communes would cook up a placenta stew and share it among themselves.
Today there are placenta parties, placenta smoothies, dehydrated placenta jerky, placenta stew, placenta pills, and even placenta picnics, where a few years ago a mother put a piece of her daughter’s placenta in a “top-shelf Bloody Mary”.
“It’s a New Age phenomenon,”explains Mark Kristal, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Buffalo, and the country’s leading authority on placentophagia. “Every ten or twenty years people say, We should do this because it’s natural and animals do it.'”
The placenta — a vascular structure in the uterus of most mammals providing oxygen and nutrients for and transferring wastes from the developing fetus — also filters toxins from the mother’s bloodstream, and helps reduce the risk of transmitting viruses.
New York Magazine’s Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, claims that in ancient Egypt, the placenta had its own hieroglyph, and the Ibo tribe in Nigeria and Ghana treats the placenta like a child’s dead twin.
“In traditional Chinese medicine, small doses of human placenta are sometimes dried, mixed with herbs, and ingested to alleviate, among other things, impotence and lactation conditions. And in modern medicine, doctors often bank umbilical-cord blood to treat genetic diseases with harvested stem cells.”
According to Abrahamian, in 1930, researchers Otto Tinklepaugh and Carl Hartman described a female macaque monkey eating her placenta:
“After licking the afterbirth, she begins the grueling task .. of consuming this tough fibrous mass,”they wrote. “Holding the organ in her hands, she bites and tears at it with her teeth.”Tinklepaugh and Hartman could not determine the precise reason why macaquesand virtually every other land mammaleat their own placenta. To this day, the reasons remain unclear.
One woman featured in Abrahamian’s article is Jennifer Mayer, 28, from upstate New York; Mayer works as a professional placenta-preparer. Her job is to “transform placentas into supplements that are said to alleviate postpartum depression, aid in breastmilk production and lactation, act as a uterine tonic, and replenish nutrients lost during pregnancy”.
Humans are apparently the only mammals that don’t regularly eat their own placentas, leading some researchers and natural health activists to conclude eating a placenta is Mother Nature’s way of replenishing missing or needed nutrients. Placenta’s are rich in iron, vitamin B-12 and certain hormones.
Abrahamian notes that in modern medicine, doctors often bank umbilical-cord blood to treat genetic diseases with harvested stem cells.
Some women may feel eating the placenta helps to balance hormone levels, thereby eliminating the possibility of postpartum depression.
Jodi Selander studied about the placenta’s nutritional and hormonal profile in mothering and pregnancy magazines and reviewed research in which women reported better moods, higher energy levels, and less trouble breast-feeding after consuming their placenta in capsule form.
She has since built an afterbirth empire, writes Abrahamian. She coined the term placenta encapsulation and standardized the method of transforming afterbirth into pills.
“In 2006, she began selling encapsulation kits and instructional pamphlets, which ship worldwide, through her website, placentabenefits.info. She also sells I LOVE PLACENTA T-shirts for mothers and babies, and keeps a Twitter account, @placentalady, where she solicits birth stories from her followers.”